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YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT UP: DEPOSING CHIEFS IN EARLY COLONIAL NATAL, 1847–58

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2006

THOMAS MCCLENDON
THOMAS MCCLENDON
Affiliation:
Southwestern University
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Abstract

This article examines three incidents in the history of early colonial Natal in which colonial forces under Secretary for Native Affairs Theophilus Shepstone attacked subject chiefs, deposed them and seized their herds. These incidents, which presaged the later conflict with Langalibalele, constituted in local African terms ‘eating up’, a practice whereby a chief confiscated the property of a subject convicted of conspiring against him through witchcraft. Close examination of these incidents shows how the early colonial state's rule over African subjects was inevitably imbued with African understandings of power and authority.

Keywords

Natalcolonial rulechiefspowerwitchcraft
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , July 2006 , pp. 259 - 279
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Research for this article was funded by Southwestern University and the Board of Higher Education of the United Methodist Church. I wish to thank Meredith McKittrick and Aran MacKinnon for helpful comments. I am also grateful to participants in the Northeast Workshop on Southern Africa, the History Seminar at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, and the anonymous reviewers for this journal.